Wal-Mart Revs Up ‘Small’ Store Openings

The world’s largest retailer is going small. Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT[1]) is planning to open more of its smaller Neighborhood Market and Express stores in addition to its established Walmart Supercenters.

The Neighborhood Market stores, according to The Wall Street Journal[2], average less than 50,000 square feet. Walmart Express shops measure between 10,000 and 15,000 square feet.

While continuing to develop new Walmart Supercenters, the company is accelerating the rate at which it’s opening the smaller Neighborhood Markets. With 80 launched in 2012, the retailer hopes to raise that to more than 95 in 2014 and a total of more than 500 by 2016. The sales target is $10 billion for the smaller stores once 500 are open.

The firm is also throwing more of its weight behind its e-commerce and social media marketing. With 22 million Facebook (NASDAQ:FB[3]) fans, Wal-Mart will use the social networking site to allow fans to vote on discounts and which products it should sell.

All this is on top of the earlier announcement that Wal-Mart is testing same-day delivery in some markets to compete with Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN[4]) similar efforts.